Mona Charen Columns category
Mona Charen: In defense of pregnancy
With the end of Roe, the press has been full of accounts of how difficult pregnancy is for women. In addition to stories about the dangers of ectopic pregnancies (which can be life-threatening), hyperemesis gravidarum, perineal trauma, preeclampsia (pathological high blood pressure that is a leading cause of childbirth-related death)...
Mona Charen: It’s not what Trump knew, but what he had a responsibility to know
Watergate, whose 50th anniversary is upon us, is remembered for the question: “What did the president know and when did he know it?” But in our age of post-truth politics, the question loses its punch. The Jan. 6 committee devoted the second of its public hearings to demonstrating beyond doubt...
Mona Charen: Retire these gun myths
The aftermath of a horrific mass shooting is not the time one would usually turn to a humor site, and yet, The Onion had an insightful take on Uvalde. The headline: “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” And here’s the kicker: The Onion has...
Mona Charen: Are Democrats up to preventing next coup attempt?
In 1980, because I was an idealistic conservative eager to do my bit for democracy, I volunteered for my local Republican Party as a poll watcher. When polls closed, election officials asked us to gather around as they opened the backs of the machines one by one and tallied the...
Mona Charen: The end of abortion absolutism?
For nearly half a century, the Supreme Court freed Americans from thinking hard about abortion. Its decisions in Roe v. Wade and later cases removed the matter from legislative consideration. That liberated voters from the responsibility to consider the competing values at issue. Whatever you think of those rulings —...
Mona Charen: Climate catastrophists need to chill
The Supreme Court building is surrounded by crowd-control barricades after the leak of a draft decision in the Dobbs case. The plaza was clear, however, on April 22, Earth Day, when Wynn Bruce of Boulder, Colo., set himself aflame to protest climate change. Bruce’s extreme deed, an echo of the...
Mona Charen: In Utah, Democrats get serious about democracy
Fighting Republican authoritarianism means sometimes delaying political gratification. The Utah Democratic Party did something extraordinary last month: They threw their support behind a Republican. Well, a former Republican, anyway. Evan McMullin, who ran for president as an independent in 2016, is now seeking to unseat Sen. Mike Lee. At the...
Mona Charen: Tucker Carlson and the crisis of masculinity
Tucker Carlson’s foray into testicle toasting is only the latest (and possibly most amusing) example of the right wing’s masculinity obsession. The manliness theme keeps reappearing. Donald Trump’s strutting tough talk was imbibed greedily by fans eager for affirmation of the manly virtues. Trump and his acolytes didn’t invent this;...
Mona Charen: How to disarm the crazies
There is probably no easy cure for the Marjorie Taylor Greene phenomenon. She’s a repellent clown whose presence on the national stage has yielded nothing but degradation — except for the guffaw she afforded us when denouncing Nancy Pelosi’s “Gazpacho police.” And she has lots of company. Her colleagues in...
Mona Charen: Democrats need to be better at politics, fast
When voters are dissatisfied with the state of things, they punish the party in power, and Democrats seem poised for a thumping. This may be bad news for the health of democracy, but it is understandable as a matter of electoral politics because Democrats have forgotten what they grasped in...
Mona Charen: Is it racist to help Ukraine?
“Many in Mideast See Hypocrisy in Western Embrace of Ukraine,” read an Associated Press headline last week. Salon asked: “Whose Lives Really Matter?” and answered its own question in the next breath — “How Racism Colors Coverage of the Crisis in Ukraine.” On social media, a tweet by Ayo Sogunro,...
Mona Charen: Trans politics needs to slow down and wait for trans science
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas recently used his executive authority to declare that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for those under 18 meet the legal standard for child abuse in Texas, a ruling that authorized the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents who had sought such...
Mona Charen: The Ukraine speech Biden should give now
President Biden should deliver an Oval Office address. Here is a suggestion: My fellow Americans, our country has been through several tough years. The pandemic was a severe blow. But even more serious than the disease was the fraying of our national spirit. We’ve been so polarized that we’ve forgotten...
Mona Charen: Thank God Trump isn’t president right now
President Biden is not very good at his job, and yet, I thank God every day that Biden is president. In the Ukraine crisis, he has redeemed the hopes of those who voted for competence. The administration’s warnings to Moscow were unambiguous without being hysterical. Our revelations of intelligence unmasking...
Mona Charen: Nuclear is the answer for Putin, and for climate change
Imagine for a moment that Russian President Vladimir Putin had used different tactics. Imagine that Putin had just been a little less nakedly aggressive; if he had worked to undermine democracy and dismantle the post-Cold War architecture with a bit more subtlety; if he had stuck with the tactics he...
Mona Charen: How Democrats can save themselves
On Tuesday, President Biden will deliver his first State of the Union speech. He might want to consider some advice from two political analysts who have a track record of success. In 1989, William Galston (my esteemed colleague on the “Beg to Differ” podcast) and Elaine Kamarck, both of the...
Mona Charen: Verdict is in — Trump wasn’t right about China
Was President Trump right about China? No. Let’s count the ways. One: Trump’s entire conception of the China challenge was fallacious. Trump thought the problem China posed was that it sold us too many things, resulting in a bilateral “trade deficit,” which meant that China was “winning” and we were...
Mona Charen: Pre-K’s broken promise
“Children learning, parents earning!” That was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s summation of the case for the “comprehensive child care and early learning legislation” of 2017, a plan similar to the proposal currently languishing in President Biden’s Build Back Better legislation. For many progressives, it is axiomatic that government-funded day care...
Mona Charen: Trump coup is ongoing
Some look back on the events following Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss and think we dodged a bullet: There was a coup attempt, and thankfully it failed. Others believe that the whole thing has been overblown. Even as evidence piles up that the coup was far more extensive than siccing...
Mona Charen: Everybody’s getting CRT wrong — except most Americans
In 2020, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., included so-called whiteness traits in its “Talking About Race” online portal. The museum advised that traits like “hard work” and “objective thinking” were vestiges of “whiteness.” When this created a stir, the museum (which is fantastic, by the way) removed the online...
Mona Charen: Is inflation Biden’s fault?
President Biden’s standing with voters has taken a beating on multiple fronts. He is perceived as not focusing on issues they care about, particularly inflation. Inflation is a president slayer. Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls. When they were lifted, prices soared even higher. Would Nixon have been removed...
Mona Charen: Are Democrats trying to lose elections?
Would you have predicted that the first big political blunder of 2022 would be committed by the freshly inaugurated mayor of New York? Would you have thought that Eric Adams, the African American former cop, political moderate and skilled campaigner who represented a better path for Democrats, would step on...
Mona Charen: Did the Jan. 6 coup fail?
Jan. 6 should have been the point of no return, the pivot point at which even the most blinkered sugarcoaters of Trumpism recoiled in disgust from what they had wrought. For everyone who had convinced themselves that, whatever Trump’s flaws, the true threat to the American way of life lay...
Mona Charen: The unnecessary Manchin mess
“Joe Manchin Just Killed the Biden Agenda,” lamented a headline in The Week. The funereal tone was echoed in much of the coverage of Sen. Manchin’s blunt declaration last week that he would not support the Build Back Better legislation in its current form. Even President Biden’s White House has...
Mona Charen: The MAGA perversion of patriotism
In September, an Arizona student who tested positive for covid-19 was ordered to quarantine for several days. Seems normal, no? No. The boy’s father barged into principal Diane Vargo’s office and demanded the kid be allowed back into school immediately. Vargo was alarmed when the intruder told her others were...
